Dear Heinrich,
Thank you for reading my essay and for asking excellent questions. Having read your own excellent essay, despite that we agree on key points, I see it will be difficult to frame the answers to your questions in a comment. Some answers are already presented on my comments page but I doubt you have time to read these.
First, primordial - either awareness exists from the beginning, or it 'emerges' as some process by which dumb matter becomes self-aware. If it emerges, it is an artifact, not a fundamental aspect of the universe, and any view of the universe 'understanding itself' by evolving an artifact necessary for this 'purpose' is to me not credible. And the idea that it boils down to a 'large molecule' such as the microtubule, even less so. You note that expanded consciousness exhibits "interesting (anti-) parallels to [...] triggering the quantum-to-classical transition", and mention consciousness experienced as 'dissolving'. This (more or less) is the basis of my belief in the classical continuum as reality, and the Quantum Credo as error-full interpretations of inexact projections onto reality [see my page 3]. Further you say if unitary quantum mechanics provides a truthful description of nature, then the emergence of time and classical reality depend on a local perspective on to the universe. I believe that time and space, as Einstein noted, do not exist "absent of field". Elsewhere you say that the quantum-to-classical transition is perspectival!
You treat consciousness as 'emergent' and as linked to a classical algorithm operating in the brain. This differs from my definition. The combination of 'awareness' and logical structure I call intelligence - it's here that algorithms apply. Awareness is more fundamental. You seem to subscribe to the Quantum Credo which believes classical reality emerges from quantum substrate: the 100 to 500 quantum fields that Prof. Susskind, head of physics at Stanford, proposes. You also say 'time and a definite classical (as opposed to quantum) world are necessary prerequisites for purpose and intention."
You ask: "where in the chain is the quantum-to-classical transition happening?" As I note, Zurek's long trek has gotten us no closer to the answer. As ET Jaynes remarked,
"...a false premise built into a model which is never questioned cannot be removed by any amount of new data."
In short, being very familiar with all modern theories, which have failed completely to give an integrated picture of the world, you examine the various pieces of the picture. Amazing that you can do that in 9 pages. I have it easier in that, while acknowledging the utility of the bookkeeping systems such as QFT, I observe that these are mathematical structures projected onto physical reality. That unitary quantum mechanics supports half a dozen or so interpretations is strongly indicative of this point. After almost a century quantum physicists still do not know whether the wave function is ontological or epistemological. I explain it as both but not in a brief comment. I reject Copenhagen, and have a deBroglie-Bohm-like model with particle and wave (always) properties that account for interference, while the Partition function supports the Born probability distribution. The fact that both concepts apply does not mean that they are the same thing. For a taste of the possibilities you might wish to look at my The Nature of Quantum Gravity.
In contradistinction to Schrödinger's wave mechanics, QFT treats particles as excited states of the underlying field, with a particle-per-field. This is accomplished always through the mattress spring model (see Zee) and is a simplistic way to make particles appear and disappear. As one poster put it "electrons are made from the electron field. What's the electron field made of?"
Despite Susskind's 100 to 500 quantum fields only classical fields, gravity and electromagnetism, appear as real, measurable in the lab. Quantum fields are a clever bookkeeping scheme, but artificial in nature, which is why QFT cannot calculate particle masses but must put them in 'by hand'. QFT is supported by the unrealistic Dirac equation (speed = 1.73c), inexact isospin symmetries, vacuum energy off by 120 orders of magnitude (biggest error in physics ever!), 4% discrepancy between the anomalous magnetic moment of electronic hydrogen and muonic hydrogen, 'halo' neutrons, 'massless' neutrinos, and so on. Everyone knows the Standard Model is neither correct nor complete, but lacking a better model, everyone is forced to play the game. To make it work one must introduce virtual particles, ghost particles, whatever it takes, with 20 adjustable parameters of the standard model required to fit the data. Fermi said, "with 5 parameters I can fit an elephant". So I consider particles to be real, but I don't consider the quantum fields to be real, only a bookkeeping scheme.
Mentioned in comments on my page, but not developed in my essay, the consciousness field couples to momentum density. For example, ions flowing in axons or vesicles flowing across synaptic gaps couple to this field more strongly. Even 'walkers' on microtubules. Living cells are chock-full of moving parts. So if rocks or meatballs couple, it's very weak. And neither has the logic structure to support intelligence (algorithmic). I believe it is necessary to separate 'awareness' from 'thinking'. One is primordial, the other is local, based on the emergence of logical structure. The problem is awareness. I don't see any problem with logical activity. The problem is to couple the two. I do this through momentum density.
I believe that, rather than supersede QM and GR with a new theory, the better approach is to remove the 'built-in' errors from QM and GR, and hope that the corrected theories reflect reality more closely and unitarily. I think the classical world is capable of explaining experience and experiments, and I think many of today's interpretations of mathematical projections are clever nonsense. As one who is outside the establishment, I need not deal with "microtubules" or "integrated information", as neither of these has a chance of explaining awareness, and, given awareness coupled to logic structure, intelligence is not really that hard to grasp.
Thank you for reading my essay and replying, and thank you for writing your own excellent essay.
My best regards,
Edwin Eugene Klingman
